


The Stuff of Memories

by Fantasiasies



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-15
Updated: 2014-04-15
Packaged: 2018-01-19 11:48:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1468342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fantasiasies/pseuds/Fantasiasies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean Winchester did something when he was younger that plagues him to this day. He gets constant nightmares about it - then he meets Castiel and the nightmares seem to go away. But Castiel has a few secrets, and Dean might just have to face his dark past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Stuff of Memories

Scarred face, cuts into cheeks, recent, patched up by some weak stitches making the flesh break apart slowly every time the man smiled. Dean woke up from the dream, sweating all over, the time he had been staring at that face seemed like an eternity but it was probably only a few seconds. Dean hated having his dreams. Why couldn’t he dream like a normal person, scary werewolves or whatever appearing? Instead, he has memories instead of dreams, prolonged and twisted into the most deprave things his mind could tell him, forcing him to repeat and repeat and repeat the moments that have been plaguing him for seven years that were never going to go away. He looked over at the alarm clock – 6.15 – no human should get up this early, but it was the recurring time he always got up when he dreamt about Scar Face. Before his firs lecture started at nine, he decided to study up for his exam in a week’s time. But first – breakfast.

And he had absolutely nothing. He rubbed his hand across his face, sighing heavily when he realised his big foot of a brother had visited yesterday and they had subsequently proceeded to eat three days worth of supplies in one sitting together. Sam had just broken up with his latest girlfriend, and Dean didn’t even want to get into how much teenage drama they had going on there, just happy to eat. The over-eating may have had something to do with the bad dreams… Dean shrugged – he’d experiment with that train of thought later.

As he walked to the shops, Gabe, a senior in his university, pounced on him.

‘What’re you doing up this early?’ Dean asked warily seeing as even though it was a weekday, Gabriel normally partied until the early hours of the morning every day. He didn’t even know what degree the guy was doing because he didn’t do any work for it.

‘Ahh, long story. But without the author-ly details – I thought I was hooking up with a chick and it turned out to be a dude.’

‘And that stopped you?’

‘ Well, it wouldn’t normally but the dude obviously thought the same thing. And after that I couldn’t really go back to the party to drink because it was his party.’

‘Well, that’s what you get when you dress in drag all the time.’

‘I do it because my face is too rugged and handsome usually. I don’t want to be responsible for all the girls in the vicinity swooning and fainting at my feet. Think of the hassle it would be to clean up!’

Dean rolled his eyes ‘Yeah, why are you up at 6.30 I mean. Normally I would have to stick a needle up your ass for you to be up before noon.’ Gabe was afraid of needles. Ironic, seeing as he still managed to get substances into his body no-one would even think of doing.

‘Yeah, you’d like that wouldn’t you?’ Gabe wiggled his eyebrows and Dean cringed at the mental image. Impala, think of the Impala. Well that didn’t work, now the Impala was tainted with Gabriel’s ass too.

 ‘Well’ Gabriel continued ‘I’m going to get coffee. It should be around here anyways.’

Dean waved him goodbye – the shops were a bit further than the coffee shop. Although he could do with some coffee right now.

He lugged home his supply of everything he would need for the next week, realising just how strong he was, and just how fast the tiny plastic handles of the bag could cut off blood circulation.

Waffles, pancake mix (because who could be bothered to do it themselves?), ready to dry burgers, burger buns, sausages, eggs, bacon (about 4 packets because Dean had random sudden cravings for bacon now like he was pregnant), other high cholesterol meat products (including SPAM – he’d just wanted to try it for some reason) and his little treat – a full fat chocolate milkshake with pieces of chocolate and extra sweet toffee syrup mixed in. Well, sugar drove him harder than caffeine. And he really, really needed a sugar boost right now.

He really should have gotten high blood pressure and died by now, if the food was anything to go by. Dean attributed the fact he hadn’t died yet to his stunning exercise programme of… randomly running to places. It was amazing how much exercise he got in the day by accident.

 

‘Shit shit shit shit shit.’ Dean looked up at the time – it was 8.55, his lecture hall was 15 minutes away and he had just finished sliding the burger off the pan inside the buns.  Biting a huge chunk off, he grabbed his bag – it was like carrying a brick around it was so overfilled and sprinted round the corner.

Wheeling right into someone. As the flurry of papers settled Dean realised he was still standing – albeit rubbing the bottom of his chin which was sore. The slightly shorter, slightly scruffier man was sitting on the floor, cradling his nose, which thankfully wasn’t bleeding. He was surrounded by a carpet of papers, which he had presumably been carrying before.  

Dean looked at the guy, his eyes seemed slightly brighter blue than the average person’s but then the man tilted his head slightly to the side, letting the light cut his face diagonally, and in the bright light his eyes were almost electric blue. Dean felt his icebreaker going something like ‘Haha, this is a funny cliché story to tell our kids’ but even though he was obscenely flirty, he didn’t want eyes guy thinking he was a Becky. He had been spending too much time around his weird classmate who sat next to him in one of his classes.

She always sent googly eyes at his brother when Sam came to visit even though Sam was about 4 years younger than her and it was starting to get majorly creepy. She had even gone up to him once and, no shit, the first thing she had asked him was where he lived.

All this went through his head in a few seconds, and whilst most normal people would have gotten up and started picking up the snowfall of papers, eyes guy just sat there, head tilted exactly the same way, eyes sparkling exactly the same way.

As soon as it was clear to him Dean had snapped out of his reverie, eyes guy offered his hand – still sitting on the floor, the other hand still shielding his nose ‘Castiel.’

The deep note sounded a little odd coming out of a guy smaller than Dean, like he had watched too many Batman movies, because he definitely didn’t seem like someone who did a lot of screaming. ‘Dean, nice t’meetcha.’ Dean mumbled, kneeling, embarrassed at being so clumsy and out of it. Only then did he realise he was pressing one of the pristine white sheets into the gravel.

‘Sorry!’ That really should have been the first thing he said to be honest. He picked up the sheet, and yes, it had to be the front sheet, dirty brown marks over the ‘Material Science – Analysis of Creep’.

‘Creep? You study how to do the creep?’

Castiel seemed unamused, almost pitying like Dean didn’t actually know obviously ‘the creep’ wasn’t a stupid dance move in Material Science.

‘No actually – the creep is the topic I am studying, concerning the tendency of a material to move slowly under mechanical stresses.’

Dean nodded awkwardly ‘Yeah… cool, buddy.’

He then realised Castiel was still sitting and the papers were still all over the floor, and started to pick them up. Castiel had yet to move. Dean started getting annoyed, sure the guy was good looking but why the hell was he just sitting on the pavement? Oh well, Dean had been the one to knock him over. He handed the stack of papers to Castiel, sighing to himself because he knew he was going to miss half the lecture. He guessed he could persuade Charlie to tell him the notes.

‘Bye then.’ Castiel said, still sitting on the floor, what was he doing?

Dean shrugged on his backpack, shoulders getting used to the familiar ache ‘Bye to you too.’

He walked off, overly conscious of his turtle appearance (as Sam teased) with his backpack packed to straining point whilst he could just feel the uncomforting gaze of two bright eyes.

 

‘Notes?’ Dean was waiting outside the lecture hall as the students flooded out.

Charlie scoffed ‘Ha! Why would you want to write down notes? Whilst Skittle was talking I typed exactly what he was saying into the laptop – he was talking I kid you not, word for word from a textbook.’

They’d nicknamed their teacher Skittle after the bowling pins because of the way he wobbled from side to side whilst talking. That and the fact all his shirts seemed to be red and white striped.

‘What was the textbook then?’

As Charlie rambled on about the textbook and how rambling it was, and the numerous textbooks she was going to email him which were so much better, Dean started thinking about the guy. Those eyes seemed familiar. Also, if he was a university student, that would mean that he was either part of their one – Kronos, or part of their arch nemesis’ university, Brannings.

‘Dean’

Knowing Dean’s luck, he would be a Brannings boy.

‘Dean’

But the universities only really played pranks on each other, so it was fine.

‘DEAN!’ Charlie was literally an inch from Dean’s ear and he stumbled backwards, flailing.

‘Shit Charlie!’ Dean wanted to be angry, but he just felt like laughing.

Suddenly Charlie’s expression was open and concerned ‘Did you have nightmares again?’

‘Why? Do I have bags under my eyes?’

‘Nope, you always tend to drift off a bit more.’

‘Well.’ Dean’s eyes suddenly itched and he rubbed them furiously. ‘Yeah.’

‘Which guy was it?’

‘Scar Face.’ Dean was kind of relieved, he always woke up near to screaming when it was Mask Guy.

‘Why do you think you always have nightmares about those two?’

‘I dunno.’

Dean’s guilt at not telling Charlie this one bit of his life was receding the more he lied. She still thought they were nightmares – not reality. And he had only told her about the two men, not the bright black eyes staring up – he felt like throwing up just thinking about them. Those were the worst dreams, the crushing guilt plaguing him for the whole week after one of those.

 

 

Dean felt so tired, like he could just collapse on his bed as soon as he felt the quilt. He had two lectures today, and about six hours of studying at the library in between, trying to make sense of the badly taught Economics. He didn’t even know where he was going with this degree. He really shouldn’t be tired at only 6pm but he had been using his brain at full capacity and he really felt the effects of it. Damn his university and the way they planned their years so awfully.

He was about to turn the corner to his road when he saw a page flapping from underneath a coffee cup on the side of the road. Turning over the page and reading it he groaned. This was obviously one of the pages from Castiel’s essay – the conclusion, no less. Page 15, the font unbelievably tiny. Dean wondered distantly what the rest of the papers where when he was chipped on the shoulder, spinning, by a cyclist. ‘Sorry!’ The childish voice called back to him. Dean touched the sore spot, squinting. That would probably be a bruise tomorrow.

Dean stopped at Sam’s flat – the one he was sharing with some of his other friends since Dean’s uni had a ‘no cohabitation’ policy. After the third knock Sam stumbles out, he’s just about finished his growth spurt and he’s towering over Dean, the bad smell of his breath floating down.

And Dean feels inexplicably angry, like he could break the world, put it back together only to scream ‘Fuck you!’ and smash it all over again.

Sam grins at him from above, the stupid fucking dimples Dean always used to tease him for appearing and Dean disconnects himself, steps back.

‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

He dragged a giggly Sam back to his apartment. He was starting to get too old to haul Sammy’s huge ass  back to his flat. Yes, after all the hours of studying, Dean thought he sympathised with grumpy old men. They had a point.

He pushed Sam onto the couch and changed into his night clothes. When he came back some of the anger had subsided as he saw Sam stretched out across the sofa chair, most of his body dangling off the edge past each of the arm rests. He really had a bad habit that he couldn’t stay mad too long as his baby brother. Sam’s head lolled back, and Dean wanted to ask him when he woke up how he managed to keep all of the saliva in his mouth with his head tilted to the side. Sam must have some posh friends because he had the manners of a Queen that Dean sure as hell didn’t have. But that question would be after he had gotten into his parental speech mojo and given Sam a long talk. He didn’t know why this bothered him so much. Most kids started drinking at about 16, actually, most of them started drinking before 16, he knew he had but for some reason he wanted Sam to grow up just about as differently from himself as he could. He wanted more for Sam, the smartass brother who always managed smartass comments back at Dean that left Dean speechless. Dean genuinely believed if Sam wanted to be president, he could. He’d got the charisma, he’d got the smarts, and Dean didn’t want anything to ruin that, even if Sam had only been experimenting with alcohol.

Looking at Sam completely content asleep made Dean remember his own sleepiness, and for the first time in a month, he fell asleep almost instantaneously.

 

Dean got up feeling like his bones weren’t made from ash, feeling the warmth of the blanket seep into his flesh, feeling rejuvenated for the first time in as long as he could remember. And another plus – he hadn’t remembered anything at all during his sleep. Just pure, blackout bliss.

And now he was feeling better, he smirked to himself when he thought of all the ways he could pester Sam. He walked along the corridor, and opened the door, which gave a high pitched squeal that brought Sam out of his fantasy land.

‘Demons…’ Sam woke up, rubbing his eyes of the gunk, and then flinched – no doubt feeling the hangover effects.

It seemed he was trying to just go back to sleep when Dean marched up beside him and started poking him. In his half-asleep state, Sam swatted at the side of the bed, whilst Dean circulated, poking, poking, poking. Finally, Sam’s hand slammed down irritable on… the wooden table, and he shouted in pain, and then cringed at the sharp spike of different pain his shouting had caused.

‘I hate you.’ Sam meant it to come out as threatening but Dean laughed, remembering the 5 year old Sam who used to say it in exactly the same way, and Dean ruffled his shaggy hair.

No matter how much he joked about cutting off that ridiculous hair, it gave Sam a certain kiddish feel that Dean liked reminiscing to. Again, Dean felt like a 70 year old man thinking ‘back in the day’ but he didn’t really care.

He cooked up quick pancakes, hoping Sam would accept the sweet things to ease off the pain of the hangover, and not stick to his masochistic veggie diet – Dean constantly asking him how he didn’t starve to death eating just vegetables and Sam would glare at him and then give him an hour long presentation on how our early ancestors ate mainly vegetables blahdiblahdiblah. Sam accepted the pancakes, and Dean kept half for himself, dousing them with syrup and stuffing the gloop into his mouth, relishing the pop as he licked his fingers. What? Around his brother he could be as unhygienic and disgusting as he wanted to be. It was part of the joy of having a brother, apart from the constant insults.

He tried to get out of a good mood and into serious I-am-very-disappointed-in-you look. ‘Sam. We’re going to talk about-‘ Dean waved his arm in Sam’s general fuzzy haired, squinty eyed direction ‘-this when I get back. But for now I need to go and study.’

Dean couldn’t mess up his routine because he’d found out before if he wasn’t strict on himself he ended up just procrastinating endlessly. He walked out of the house and turn only to find Castiel standing on the very bit of pavement they had collided at, squinting into the sun. Today was a surprisingly hot day. And wow, he’d remembered Castiel’s name after just one introduction. Obviously he was quite attracted, no matter how much his brain was screaming ‘CREEPY CREEPY CREEPY SERIAL KILLING MACHINE.’ at him because he’d made plenty a bad decision and he thought if someone was this good looking, one more couldn’t hurt. (well, it could, but Dean generally tried not to think about the afterlife)

Castiel looked sideways, noticing Dean and Dean realised he had frozen for a few seconds. Wow, Castiel had a knack for making Dean forget about his surroundings, where he was going, what he was doing apart from – oh there’s a little smile, I like his little shy smiles.

Castiel didn’t have any papers with him this time, strangely he didn’t have anything. He was just in a jumper (nicely styled and impressive that he hadn’t fainted in the heat yet) and jeans. Dean was packed a bit lighter on the rucksack too.

‘Dean right?’ Dean felt a little flutter that Cas (wow, already nicknames, next stop proposal) had remembered his name and he felt a bit giddy that he might actually have been waiting for Dean outside in a sweater when it was boiling.

‘What’re you doing here Cas?’ Dean felt a bit conscious of his speech – he didn’t talk gangster, but compared to Cas it was like he was an ape, compared to those crisp enunciated syllables that just screamed ‘I came from the best public school in the nation, peasant’. If Dean wanted to make himself jealous, he could have almost said that Sam the Queen could combine with Cas the King and make the perfect snobbish team. 

Cas looked up ‘Appreciating the scenery.’ He squinted up at the sunlight, like he was trying to go blind.

Dean chuckled ‘Thanks, I do try to look my best.’ Maybe that was a little too flirty for the fifth line Dean had ever said to this guy, but Castiel turned to face him.

He was still squinting, as if Dean was the same as the sun. Dean scoffed at his own cheesiness.

‘Yes. I was actually talking about our surroundings, but I guess that is another point with its own validity.’

Dean grinned slightly – Cas had just agreed that he was hot. Kind of.

‘What are you doing here, Cas?’

‘I just… wanted to get out of the house.’

Dean remembered the conclusion page that he’d picked up.

‘Here you go, I found this under a coffee cup.’

Cas took the piece of paper, taking a moment to read it before folding it up and putting it in his jeans.

‘This gesture deserves to be rewarded. I’ll treat you sometime.’

Dean was just about to ask what time and where it would be when Castiel starts walking in the opposite direction. Dean feels bad for staring at those legs, the nicely ruffled hair, the curve of his neck, but if Castiel can do it, he can do it.

 

 

 

 

 

AN : Hey guys, I don't know why I started writing a fic just before exams but here it is! Comments would be appreciated and yes, the Destiel is awkward, deal with it. Also, if anyone notices any mistakes or has any suggestion give me a heads up!

Hasta luego!

 

 


End file.
